Google SketchUp November 12, 2006

After 15 years of using Autodesk software I’ve grown weary of their tyrannical ways. Once, they were a mighty cool company, but now they’ve managed to combine Microsoft’s monopoly enabled screw everybody business model with the airline industry’s legendary customer service. On top of that, Autodesk has expressed a severe lack of interest in Linux/Unix/OS X.

They’re begging for some open source competition, but the open source CAD programs seem to be lagging too far behind to make them shape up. Maybe Google will come to the rescue. In March they bought a six year old startup called @Last Software, maker of a 3D modeling program called SketchUp. In April they released a free version of SketchUp for casual users, and it looks pretty intuitive. This 4 minute video is full of annoying cliches, but it gives a good overview:

There’s a pro version as well. I don’t know how it compares to Revit, but I guarantee it won’t take Google 6 weeks to deliver it like it took Autodesk to get me my new copy of Revit.